CNN Corrects a Trump Story, Fueling Claims of ‘Fake News’

CNN on Friday corrected an erroneous report that Donald Trump Jr. had received advance notice from the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks about a trove of hacked documents that it planned to release during last year’s presidential campaign.

The report fueled theories about coordination between the Trump campaign and a foreign power, and stocks dropped after the news. In fact, Mr. Trump’s instruction to Mr. Flynn came after he was president-elect.

The president and his circle have not been shy about pointing out the errors.

“I know you can’t help but spread #fakenews @cnn,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted on Friday. And in the wake of ABC News suspending Mr. Ross, the president celebrated on Twitter, writing, “More Networks and ‘papers’ should do the same with their Fake News!” He also encouraged “People who lost money when the Stock Market went down” to sue ABC for damages.

CNN’s erroneous scoop, about the email to Donald Trump Jr., rocketed around cable news and social media on Friday morning. But it fell apart after The Washington Post reported that the email — which included a decryption key to access hacked documents — was dated Sept. 14, not Sept. 4, as CNN initially reported. WikiLeaks publicized links to the documents in question on Sept. 13.

CNN said that its report had been based on information from two sources and vetted by the network’s in-house fact-checking team. But both sources were apparently incorrect about the date of the message.

“The new information indicates that the communication is less significant than CNN initially reported,” CNN wrote in an updated article.

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